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High suicide rates in Scotland are being fuelled by alcohol and drug misuse, a new report has claimed.

Experts at the University of Manchester found that Scottish people are nearly twice as likely as those in England and Wales to take their own life, and the problem is being blamed on alcohol and drug consumption.

Scotland was found to have a suicide rate of 18.7 per 100,000. This compares with 10.2 per 100,000 in England and Wales.

Of the 1,373 patient suicides detailed in the Lessons for Mental Health Care in Scotland report, 785 cases were linked to alcohol misuse and 522 cases had a history of drug misuse.

'There has been a welcome recent fall in the suicide rates among the general Scottish population but, despite this, the most striking feature of rates north of the border is how much higher they are than in England and Wales,' said Louis Appleby, professor of psychiatry at the University of Manchester and national director for mental health in England.

Homicide rates, meanwhile, equated to 2.12 per 100,000 people in Scotland compared to 1.23 per 100,000 in England and Wales, and drug and alcohol dependence were diagnosed in many of the perpetrators.

'The findings suggest that alcohol and drugs lie behind Scotland's high rates of suicide and homicide and the frequency with which they occur as antecedents in our report are striking,' Professor Appleby claimed.